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Artist Suggesting Ways Around Copy Protection
fanboyslayer writes "Switchfoot's new album Nothing Is Sound shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologizing for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex's download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3. Many of Switchfoot's fans have been upset by the copy protection measures, and it's nice to know the artists seem to care about the issue."
It's nice to see bands standing up for their public against the wishes of their labels. I can imagine this posting will cause some heated discussions within Sony!
For those too lazy to RTFA their advice is "press shift when loading the CD", and "if that's too late, burn the music back to CD and rip it again".
This fellow seems quite intelligent and able to express himself in writing. I wonder if he wrote that or if his publicist did it for him. I've had this idea that rockers are spaced-out potheads. Well at any rate, he has my respect.
"Hello friends,
my heart is heavy with this whole copy-protection thing. Many PC users have posted problems that they have had importing the new songs (regular disc only, not the dual disc) into programs such as Itunes. Let me first say that as a musician AND as a music fan, I agree with the frustration that has been expressed. We were horrified when we first heard about the new copy-protection policy that is being implemented by most major labels, including Sony (ours), and immediately looked into all of our options for removing this from our new album. Unfortunately, this is the new policy for all new major releases from these record companies. It is heartbreaking to see our blood, sweat, and tears over the past 2 years blurred by the confusion and frustration surrounding this new technology. It is also unfortunate when bands such as ourselves, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, etc... (just a few of the new releases with copy protection) are the target of this criticism, when there is no possible way to avoid this new industry policy.
For mac users these songs should import seamlessly. We are told that itunes is coming out with a new version for PC users in early November that will be compatible with all of these new CD's but in the meantime it's frustrating for all of us. That said, there are a number of solutions (as is always the case with these types of things) for importing the CD into your itunes and ipod. We have compiled some of the easier ways below. I feel like as a band and as listeners, we've all been through a lot together over the past ten years, and we refuse to allow corporate policy to taint the family we've developed together. We deeply regret that there exists the need for any of our listeners to spend more than 30 seconds importing our music, but we're asking as friends and partners in this journey together to spend the extra 10 minutes that it takes to import these songs, which we think you'll agree to be our finest collection of songs yet. As a band, we've always been known for having the best fans in the world and I know that will continue for years to come. A month from now, I hope to be singing these songs together at a show, and the extra time spent importing the music will perhaps be forgotten, or at least forgiven. Thank you for your understanding and the continued kindness that you have always shown for five dreamers from San Diego, we love you guys,
-tim foreman"
On her Web site, Tristan, too, apologizes for the copy protection and links to a threaded discussion on her site about bypassing the protection to rip the tracks.
It's a shame record companies are forcing their artists to be on the defensive about this issue. The record companies are for the protection, the consumers (especially those owning iPods or wanting to play these non-standard CDs on their computers) are against it, and the artists are left directly in the middle of the tug-of-war.
Whats the point of putting such protection on your music CDs when all you're going to do is turn around and post a link on your site about how to bypass it.
RTFA.
The band had no voice in the matter. Sony is their label and chose to put the protection on the disc, whether the band wanted it on or not. Switchfoot posted the info on bypassing it because it was pissing off a lot of their fans and that's not something most (read: not Metallica) bands want. In addition, they probably wanted to piss off Sony a little bit for abusing the power that labels have come to know and love.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Although I despise the DMCA and the major record labels as much as the next guy, it's not "their own music" since, like you said, the record company probably holds the copyrights.
Is this fucked up? Of course it is.
I was under the impression that the CD ISO Standard does not include copy-protection.
Any small-silver-disk that includes copy-protection could not be labelled as a 'CD', and must have the fact that it has copy-protection notified to the customer.
Has this changed, or does this type of protection not break the CD Standard?
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
The information linked below is out of date by a decade, but the industry hasn't changed in essence very much except for the very recent introductions of online music shopping (which the RIAA is still involved in) and podcasting/torrenting (which it isn't much, *yet*). I think the title sums it up well: "Some of your friends are already this fucked." http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic. html
The financial breakdown on this page indicates a rather bleaker picture than $2 per album.
-- What goes up must come down. Ask any SysAdmin.
yes but what their paying customers want, is in fact a way to circumvent the copy protection on the cd, whic because of the infinite intelligence that is the dmca, is illegal ;-)
If artists really cared about fans, freedom, etc. they wouldn't ink deals with the devil in the first place. Signing on with a big label isn't the only way to succeed in this world. I don't think they posted instructions like this against the label's wishes. Anything that happens within a label is the result of a marketing pow-wow. Some guy in a suit told them to post the instructions to further their rebel image and make them seem even more cool so they'll sell more albums.
Wealth, fame, and integrity; pick two.
Chemical Brothers: The Singles Double CD
Chemical Brothers: Push the Button
Fatboy Slim: Palookaville
K-OS: Joyfull Rebellion
Massive Attack: 100th Window
Massive Attack: Danny the Dog Soundtrack
A Perfect Circle: Emotive
A Perfect Circle: Thirteen Steps
Radiohead: Hail to the Theif
Royksopp: The Understanding
That is just off the top of my head. There may be more. I know I could probably circumvent the protection with a sharpie, but I prefer to not pay for something that is essentially a broken CD.
The irony of it is at 15-20 $CDN a disc, the record companies have not only helped me choose to not give them a few hundred bucks but also managed to give me more reason to "pirate" that music all with one idiotic move.
So what is it they are really trying to protect here? My wallet?
I've always considered the CD autoplay nothing more than a nuisance and have been disabling it since 1996. Anyone who thinks disabling a unneeded pre-existing windows process is circumventing the DMCA and a criminal act needs to have their head examined. They have their CD autoinstall a piece of restrictive spyware without the users knowledge and then complain when people do something to stop it. I was almost confused by that, then I remembered it's the RIAA we're talking about and the phrase "but that would make sense" doesn't apply.
I've been too lazy to hold shift so I just disabled autoplay:
Win95/98/ME get to properties of the drive uncheck auto insert notification
Win2000/XP run gpedit.msc Administrative Templates - System - Disable Auto play-enabled
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
No problem at all. Many, many region free players are available in major high street shops (including Sony), lesser hight street shops (Richer Sounds), supermarkets and online. If you are concerned there are many web sites which list capabilities of virtually every player out there and with reviews. Or you could pop into your local Co-Op and buy the 30 quid DVD player with "Region-Free" in big letters written on it. Well this is in UK, maybe different elsewhere, of course.
I just skip the whole ordeal and buy my music from mp3search.ru for a dollar an album. No DRM. High quality MP3s. Huge selection. Works on all my hardware. Even for music I already owned, it was cheaper to go through that place than waste my time popping the disks in and out of my drive and waiting for the songs to burn.
Sure, nobody involved in the making, promoting or distribution of the music gets a dime of it, but what the fuck do I care? The pushers of music don't get a fuck about me except as something to suck cash from. So why should I give a shit about them? And, luckily, I don't.
Maybe I'll go to hell for it. I don't really care. I still buy CDs from really good indie bands who deserve it. But you're fucked if you think I'm going to stick $16 in the hands of some assholes still profiting off of music from an artist dead long ago.
(bold emphasis mine) Except we all know that's not actually the truth. Sony still gets the money, and the copyright. Cue the href to the now-five-years-old Courtney Love article for more information.
Sadly, unless you're Fugazi, you're not likely to be heard by many people unless you sell out. Something about the world just not being a fair place or some such...
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
I have never had difficulty with cdparanoia. Just change to a directory, place the CD in the drive and # cdparanoia -B. You get a set of .wav files which are easily dealt with {for i in *wav; do lame -h $i && rm $i; done}. Note that you will have to download and compile lame yourself {from a server in a country where maths patents are unenforcible}.
/etc/modules and append statements in lilo.conf; but all that finally changed with the advent of 2.6.
Back in the days of 2.4 kernels, you had to muck about with SCSI emulation,
For some discs, you might need a drive of 12X or slower speed. This is because older, slower drives seem not to read all TOCs as soon as the disc is inserted; so are immune to "protection" methods involving bogus TOC entries.
I once bought a copy-protected "CD" {Macrovision / Cactus CDS 200} just for the h4x0r challenge, and was so disappointed when it came through without problems that I have not even bothered to listen to it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
There is such a thing as "right of fair use", which is sacrosanct.
In your country perhaps, but not in mine. We have no fair use rights, we can't even back up an audio or video CD/DVD to preserve the original from physical damage.
However, in this case it is the Data portion that is auto-playing and not the music. When you pop in a CD with music, or pictures, WinXP will pop up a box asking what you would like to autorun your "Music" or "Picture" CDs with. Which can also be turned off.
There's nothing to stop the harm as long as you run non-free software. The reason spyware, adware, and such can work is that nobody but the proprietor can inspect, share, and modify the program. This means that nobody else can distribute an improved version without the annoying or malicious parts of the program.
So, even if one runs a free software operating system and runs non-free software on top of that, one is not safe from the harm of malicious software. The solution is to run a free software OS and run nothing but free software on top of that.
As for DRM, the EFF has pointed out how DRM is already being leveraged against users. Fighting this will require more organization around the idea that one's customers don't deserve to be treated so shabbily.
Digital Citizen
This advice applies to the UK. (I am not a lawyer, but I have taken advice from one to exercise my statutory rights when it comes to returning copy-protected CDs that refused to play.)
If something that a reasonable person would interpret as being a CD that ought to work (and that hasn't specifically been pointed out to you before you bought it; something a reasonable person would expect, like being in a big box marked "SCRATCHED CDs - 25p"; obscure labelling on the back that it ought to play, but might not, won't do) was bought by or for you, and won't play in your CD player (any of your CD players or anything that ought to play audio CDs, regardless of whether or not it plays in the shop's CD player), it can be returned, in a complete, reasonably as received state, opened or unopened, to the retailer for refund, repair or replacement, at YOUR option under the terms of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended), Section 14, (2B) (a): a failure to meet the "fitness for all the purposes for which goods of the kind in question are commonly supplied".
You have a reasonable expectation; you buy an audio CD, or something that substantially appears to be one, it should play in things that play audio CDs. If it doesn't, you can take it back to the shop, regardless of whether or not it's been opened (how are you supposed to know if it plays without opening it? Psychic CD player?), within a "reasonable period" of time (exact limits are deliberately not rigidly defined, could be 28 days up to 6 years), and get a refund.
You don't have to accept a replacement in lieu, and they can't refuse to give you a refund if you demand one.
The shop does have to accept returns of opened CDs, if they are faulty and weren't marked specifically as faulty, or won't play.
If the shop is inclined to push it, you may need to prove it won't play; if it really won't play, this shouldn't be a problem. Bring the player along, and some working CDs to demonstrate your player isn't at fault. And remember, it might play in the shop but that doesn't prove it doesn't play in yours. (This may be awkward in some cases, but don't let that put you off, it's not £18.99 worth of awkward, and that damn CD was.)
You can demand a refund in cash. The shop can offer vouchers or a credit note, but if you demand, can't refuse to give you your cash back.
The shop is liable, not the manufacturer/distributor; that's the shop's problem to sort out, in the return channel (and they don't want to have to, which is why they really don't want to have people knowing widely about this and quoting at them).
In fact, you don't even need a store receipt; it would not be unreasonable for the shop to want some proof of purchase, but any proof of purchase will do (credit card receipt, bank statement showing transaction, cheque stub).
If the shop flat out refuses to offer you a full refund in cash, threaten to call the local Trading Standards. If they still refuse, make the call to the Citizens Advice Bureau, and follow up in Trading Standards. You can make a claim in a Small Claims Court if you feel inclined to push it, and this is very cheap and does not require a solicitor.
If even one person did this in a substantial minority of stores, distributors would no longer distribute protected discs in this territory. It wouldn't be worth the bloody hassle.
A limited user windows XP account is not a full lockdown. There are many programs you can install without being logged in as administrator. Nearly all programs that are obtained in zip format, where you unzip and run them, work. Even regular programs will install, you just need to install to somewhere you have rw access to (My Documents/Programs is a good place). Unfortunately, some programs require changing system files or the registry, and they will not run. Some install programs also explicitedly require admin rights even though they don't need it, and won't let you install otherwise.